Making Good Time
or
The Island

1-13-08

Jesse and I had been lost at sea for seven months, one week, four days, two hours, and twenty-six minutes the first time I saw the island. The sky was the murky blue of nightmares that morning, chilly in its pre-dawn grogginess. An east wind tickled the Atlantic, sending shivers up its elastic spine. Up above the sun etched shadows into the cloud cover: faces and demons of nonchalant omnipotence.

There on the houseboat, Jesse was snoring below deck. Up above, I was counting gulls. We didn’t know then what was soon to follow. And how could we? Our lives had changed once, and from there we had never looked back. The fantasy that awaited us that night would change those fragile lives again, so much so that what had been would seem dreamlike.

But seven months, one week, four days, two hours, and thirty-nine minutes before I caught first sight of the island, Jesse and I were not lost at sea; at least, not in a literal sense. On that last green day as landlubbers, Jesse and I were in a tree house, and Jesse and I were terrified.

I remember his face, a half shadowed orb beneath what light crept in from the city around. We crouched to fit in this cramped cavern that for so long had seemed so large. Jesse smiled at me the crooked smile I’d grown to love, his eyes just glints behind squared glasses. I smiled back, teeth stuck hard and holding back the flood behind my jaws- everything that kept trying to crawl from my throat. Jesse swallowed audibly, and then reached into the black, his own hand disappearing as it groped for and found mine. It shook, but it was warm. Mine was soft and clammy.

And I said, “Twelve more minutes, thirteen seconds.”

And Jesse kissed my nose.

That was the last night I ever spent in my tree house with Jesse. That was the last time I ever felt too big for my surroundings.

Three weeks before that night, I went to the bank and withdrew all my savings, the ones that weren’t part of a trust fund. The ones I had actually earned. I pocketed eight hundred dollar bills, four fifties, ten twenties, four fives, and fifteen ones. I added it to the six bills already in my pocket, and threw the receipt in their stately burgundy trashcan. The glass door jingled as I left, and outside, the reverent atmosphere that does so envelope a temple of The Holy Dollar gave way to the hiss and crank of a concrete battlefield.

That was on Jesse’s eighteenth birthday. His parents bought him a silver Corvette. He sold it that weekend and bought a houseboat. When his father bought the Corvette back three days later, Jesse left and started sleeping in my tree house. That was the last time he ever saw his parents. It was probably the first time they ever really saw him.

Four months before the bank, I was getting in my Nova outside an average private high school, parked next to an average NO TRESPASSING sign. I roused the engine, and as I checked my rear view, I saw Jesse loping up to me.

He said, “Can we talk?”

I said, “No.”

He said, “I’m sorry.”

And I told him he was, “Two years too late.”

He got into the passenger seat and jerked the door shut, and when I glared at him, he said, “Can I explain?”

And I told him, “No.”

And he kissed me.

And I kissed him.

And he smiled that half-grin.

And I drove, and he explained.

That was the last time I ever doubted Jesse.

Two years exactly, and three hours, before my doubt-free days, I was pinned against a strip of wood-paneled basement wall, and Jesse was pinning me. In a funny way I never could be trapped like I was with him. In the days when we were stupid kids with violent needs, we moved in circles always before we moved as one. This was just another day.

With his hand on my throat and his lips at mine, this was just another endless day with Jesse in me and me out of body. I’d never known what it was like to love so hard it hurt. I’d never realized you could move so slow you were flying. But together we were like a drug, or like an engine. Apart we were lost, but together we were, well… lost and happy.

That was five minutes and twenty-two seconds before Jesse left me for two years and three hours. Nineteen minutes before I was walking home in the cold, and shaking with rage, fear and confusion. And in those minutes before he became everything I hated, then everything I knew, he was still everything I had ever wanted. And what was I, but some dumb kid all caught up in something bigger than two hearts could handle? I thought it was a great love then. Now I know it was, but something much more sinister as well.

That was the first night I saw something behind the plastic veneer of an upper class nothing. It was the first night I ever wanted something more than that sparkly cold sheen. And two years, four months, three weeks, and nine hours later, on a cold wary night, Jesse and I took our houseboat to the pier. That was the first time I ever breathed the sea air all the way in.

After that, we slept a lot. Sometimes together, other times in shifts. With all our savings we’d bought everything we needed for the first month at sea. And we never did touch land that month. I cooked breakfast sometimes, and Jesse would make dinner. We talked a lot. About nothing, mostly, but sometimes, we’d accidentally stumble upon something. You see, it never mattered what we said, only that we said it. When you’re at sea sometimes the ocean will start teasing you if you don’t keep speaking human. But you learn the ocean’s tongues as well, its currents and its groans. You learn the language of the sky and of the birds. You even speak fish, eventually.

It isn’t that we never came to port though. We’d stop a couple times a month for more food, for new clothes, for books and music and supplies. If we ran out of money, we had Jesse’s paintings. They were always that same sea, but none were ever alike. And what need had they to be? None were ever offered twice to the same port. We made good time, even if we made no distance. We weren’t really going anywhere to begin with. Jesse and I were lost at sea, and we’d never been happier.

In April, we hit our first real storm. It tore the roof off one side of our boat, and snatched a few of my books. At the worst we thought we’d drown, but the best it could do was to scalp our boat. The current was so rough that it got us ahead of schedule, and the next morning we washed ashore, just in time to bunker down and patch the roof before another fiercer storm hit two days later. That was the most dramatic turn of events, up until the island. At the time, my thoughts were rabid, climbing the walls of my brain like caged hyenas.

When I first set eyes on the island, though, it was a curious calm I found. Jesse was still asleep and I wondered if I ought to even wake him. It’d be hours still before he woke, and if I played my cards right, I could avoid him seeing the island at all. We didn’t need to dock, anyway, and there was a funny thing about the island. It wasn’t on any of our maps.

But I did wake him up, and we did dock. And that night was the last time I ever saw Jesse, or the houseboat. And to this day I wonder if he might not still be there- there with the gulls and the mocking feral clouds. There with the current’s song and all the shadows it carried in its waves across those scattered and scarred coasts. On most nights I don’t wonder. It’s only when the city quiets down and you can hear its heart underneath, only when the urban clouds look wetter than they ought to. That’s when my mind starts to drift. One time, I surmise, it might not make it back.